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World Team Tennis Has Its Day at the White House

WASHINGTON — Bobby Reynolds was first in line when the doors to the Oval Office opened Monday at the White House. President Obama stepped out to greet Reynolds and his teammates on the Washington Kastles, the two-time defending champions of World Team Tennis.

“It was unexpected,” said Reynolds, who had been told by the team’s owner, Mark Ein, only to bring a nice change of clothes to work that morning.

If World Team Tennis has spent decades plugging away on the tattered margins of professional sports, the Kastles, for at least one week, did what they could to move the league to the fore. They met the president. Later that day, they played their season opener before a sweltering crowd at their 2,700-seat stadium on the city’s southwest side.

And on Tuesday they won their 34th straight match, which the league celebrated as a record-setting winning streak for a United States sports franchise. (The streak, which dated to 2011, ended Wednesday in Texas.)

Although many sports pundits questioned the legitimacy of the record — can a team with a three-week season really be compared with the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers, who won 33 straight games? — that people were discussing it at all was a victory for World Team Tennis and for the Kastles, who have established themselves as something more than a novelty in Washington.

“I think we came in and maybe made people rethink what World Team Tennis could be,” said Ein, a venture capitalist based here. “I’m fanatical about it.”

Photo

Leander Paes, left, and Bobby Reynolds on Tuesday, when the Washington Kastles won their 34th straight match.Credit
Nick Wass/Associated Press

The Kastles, one of eight teams in the league, appear determined to put on a show during their home matches. They have a stilt walker, and cheerleaders who are on hiatus from their duties with the Washington Redskins. The public-address announcer, accompanied by 10-second bursts of music, does his best to fire up the crowd between points. It quickly becomes obvious that all these theatrics are not merely ancillary to the tennis. They are as important as the tennis.

“The excitement out here, are you kidding me?” said Coach Murphy Jensen, whose personality is beyond caffeinated. “They’re going bananas. Where can it all go? It can go to the moon with this organization.”

The Kastles are not yet profitable, Ein said, and he keeps reinvesting revenue into enhancing the stadium experience and securing players. The players’ salaries are not disclosed by the league, but the bigger the name, the higher the price.

The rosters in World Team Tennis tend to feature a mix of up-and-coming players, tour veterans and retired stars like Martina Hingis, whom the Kastles enlisted this month. (Each team plays 14 regular-season matches, with the league championship scheduled for July 28.) Hingis offers a certain box-office punch as a former top-ranked player, but there is an egalitarian spirit in World Team Tennis, or at least that is the hope.

Consider Reynolds, 30, who joined the ATP Tour after three successful seasons at Vanderbilt. He has pieced together a solid career, with $1.5 million in winnings. But he has only briefly cracked the top 100. His ranking actually rose 19 spots to No. 137 after his loss last month to Novak Djokovic in the second round at Wimbledon.

Although Reynolds said it was a unique thrill to appear on Centre Court, he usually plies his trade on the fringes. Next up on his schedule is a small tournament in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he hopes to play well enough to secure a wild-card berth in the United States Open. Such is life for a vast majority of touring professionals.

At Kastles Stadium, however, Reynolds is a bona fide star — perhaps the most popular player on a team that also includes Leander Paes, a 13-time Grand Slam doubles champion. The Kastles often call on Reynolds to close out matches. A high-octane competitor, he was the only member of the team to participate in each of its 34 straight victories. He was also the league’s most valuable player last season.

Photo

The Kastles, winners of the past two World Team Tennis titles, and the owner Mark Ein met President Obama on Monday.Credit
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

“He’s the Roger Federer of World Team Tennis,” said Jensen, who has been the Kastles’ coach since 2009. “He’s the closer. He’s the meat and potatoes, the ham sandwich and the scrambled eggs. The guy just has so much to give the game, and the atmosphere and the format out here perfectly suits that type of player.”

Reynolds said he enjoyed being part of a team when he was at Vanderbilt. So when he was looking to return from a wrist injury four years ago, a friend suggested he look into World Team Tennis. It has become a vital part of his schedule.

“I say it every year: I cannot wait for these three weeks,” he said.

The league also serves a purpose for players who rank outside the top tier. Reynolds’s pay with the Kastles — which is guaranteed, unlike tournament prize money — helps subsidize his travel and training the rest of the year. He also gets three weeks of (relatively) high-pressure competition, whereas an early-round exit in Germany or Colombia would relegate him to the practice courts.

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“Every point matters in team tennis,” Reynolds said. “You just feel like you’re so much more focused.”

But concerns about the long-term viability of World Team Tennis have trailed the league, in all its iterations, since 1974. Jensen participated as a player for eight years and said he came away from the experience ready to move on.

“The last place I actually wanted to go back to was World Team Tennis,” Jensen said.

Jensen said his perception changed when he met Ein and saw what he was doing with the franchise. It was clear to him that Ein wanted to build something better.

If nothing else, he has built something louder.

A version of this article appears in print on July 14, 2013, on Page SP7 of the New York edition with the headline: From Periphery of Pro Sports To the White House. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe